I so regret shouting at my father when he was in the grip of Alzheimer's: Arlene Phillips on how she is haunted by way she treated her dad as she struggled to understand his illness
- Arlene spent years caring for her father as he battled Alzheimer's disease
- But the 71-year-old is haunted by regret over how she treated him
- She said that she struggled to understand the nature of his illness
Struggled to cope: Arlene Phillips is haunted by regret over how she treated her father
She spent years caring for her father as he battled Alzheimer’s disease.
But Arlene Phillips is haunted by regret over how she treated him, as she struggled to understand the nature of his illness.
Abraham Phillips died in 2000 aged 89. His daughter told how she found it hard to keep her temper as he asked her the same questions over and over.
Speaking in detail about her father’s condition for the first time yesterday, the 71-year-old choreographer said she knew she should have been more understanding, but that she found it difficult to deal with his decline.
‘I can’t tell you how much I regret [the way I treated my father] and how many times I relive moments in my head, wishing I’d thought about it more,’ said the former Strictly Come Dancing judge.
‘[He] would go on and on about how someone had stolen money from his flat. “Did you take my money?” he’d ask, and I’d say, “Of course not Daddy”, but it would grow and escalate until I’d be at the end of my tether and shouting, “Of course I didn’t steal your money – why would I touch it?”
‘What I should have said was, “I hear what you’re saying, let’s look for it”, even if the whole pattern repeated day after day after day.’
The mother of two – who lost her own mother to cancer aged 15 – did her best to care for her father, first at his London flat and later with the help of professionals in a nursing home.
But she admitted her lack of knowledge about Alzheimer’s compromised the level of support she was able to give him.
‘Instead of me being angry and feeling that he was being aggressive and attacking me, I now know that that’s not the way it works,’ she said. ‘I could have created a calmer environment. It’s so hard to live with your mistakes when they’ve personally affected someone you love.
‘I don’t know how much he would have remembered – I’m sure he would have quickly forgotten our rows and gone on to something else – but at the time, when we were in it, it was a terrible thing to do to someone.
‘I’m so sad to admit that I did not know how to care for him. I’m not the most patient person in the world, but we had so many unnecessary rows over my lack of understanding, and there are other people like me.’
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The Alzheimer’s Society predicts that by next year there will be 850,000 dementia sufferers in the UK, costing the country as much as £26billion a year.
By 2025, more than one million people are likely to be affected.
In light of this, Miss Phillips said she wants to see more done to change society’s attitudes towards dementia and relieve the ‘overwhelming’ burden placed on families left to care for loved ones.
Dementia battle: Arlene said that she struggled with her father Abraham Phillips' condition. He died in 2000
‘We need to be taught to allow people with dementia to live in the world that they see and not dismiss it all the time by constantly telling them they’re wrong. That does nothing to help,’ she said.
‘We have to find help and we have to provide money because there are armies of carers out there, daughters, brothers, sisters.
‘We all need to be friends to people with dementia, help people who seem lost, help people who are struggling in the street.’
Miss Phillips, currently working on new show Brazouka, which is at London’s New Wimbledon Theatre until Saturday, also voiced worries about one day developing Alzheimer’s herself.
Desperate: The former Strictly judge claimed she would take her own life if diagnosed with the condition
She has previously claimed she would take her own life if diagnosed with the condition, and said yesterday: ‘I’m so often forgetting people’s names and I go home panicking and say to my daughters, “Oh my goodness I think I’m losing it”, and they’ll say, “But Mummy, you’ve never been able to remember anyone’s names, you even call us by the wrong names”.
‘They laugh, but have promised to tell me if they think I’m losing it.’
Miss Phillips lives in London with her partner, Angus Ion, 60.
She has two daughters, Alana, 34, whose father she has never publicly revealed, and Abi, born to her and Mr Ion when she was 47.
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